LEXINGTON, KY — Outstanding juvenile Sun Goddess (Sioux Nation), many people's idea of the European banker at the 2026 Breeders' Cup, remains at the peak of her powers, according to trainer Aidan O'Brien, with the daughter of Sioux Nation seemingly showing no signs of her long season catching up with her when experiencing her first taste of the Keeneland cauldron on Tuesday morning.For a filly who has danced every dance since her Naas debut back in May, Sun Goddess could have been forgiven had she appeared leg-weary when embarking on her first foray outside of the confines of the European quarantine facility, much like the jet-lagged travelling press attempting to keep step with the 10-strong Ballydoyle battalion. In reality, Europe's champion two-year-old-elect was anything but.“You saw her coming in there, she's unusual, isn't she?” asked O'Brien rhetorically after supervising the squad tasked with trying to add to his joint-record tally of 21 Breeders' Cup winners. “She prowls rather than walks. Did you see the walk on her? She's on springs.”O'Brien's first Breeders' Cup winner came way back in 1999 when Johannesburg dented some big reputations among the home team in plundering the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile at Belmont Park. The beaten odds-on favourite, Officer, hailed from the barn of Bob Baffert, with whom O'Brien now shares the title of winningmost trainer at the Breeders' Cup.The success of Johannesburg was also significant for it making him a rare two-year-old to win four Group 1s in a calendar year. It's a feat which Sun Goddess will try to emulate when she makes her ninth appearance of 2026 in Friday's GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, potentially one of the races of the weekend with her fellow Group 1 winners Amusingly (No Nay Never) and Green Empress (Saxon Warrior) featuring among the opposition.“Johannesburg won four [Group 1s] in four different countries. He probably wasn't as scopey as this filly. She's big and she has a great mind, a long stride and loads of speed,” O'Brien added of his Phoenix, Moyglare and Cheveley Park heroine.“When one like that arrives, it's just different. I didn't think she would be early, but she's by Sioux Nation and they have speed. The minute we started working her, she just kept growing and physically developing. She obviously loved working.“I'd say she looks very special. The things she's been doing are incredible. She obviously could have taken in the Fillies' Mile on the way and the lads decided to leave her. She looks very unique, in everything she does. She's very exciting and I'm delighted that the lads decided to come here with her. At the end of the year, you never know, and she is drawn out a little bit, but maybe it's not a disadvantage to her.”'We're visitors and we're lucky to be allowed to visit!'In gate nine of 14, Sun Goddess actually fared rather better than many of her stablemates when the post-position draw for the 14 Breeders' Cup races was held on Monday.Among the Ballydoyle inmates who will be making acquaintance with the Keeneland car parking attendants are Great Barrier Reef (No Nay Never), drawn 14 of 14 in the GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf; True Love (No Nay Never) and Puerto Rico (Wootton Bassett), in stalls 12 and 14, respectively, in the GI Breeders' Cup Mile; Diamond Necklace (St Mark's Basilica), berthed in gate 12 for the GI Breeders' Cup Turf; and Precise (Starspangledbanner), who will break from stall 11 in the GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Turf.“It is what it is – you just accept it, try to make a plan and not overthink it,” O'Brien said of the apparent obstacles faced by that contingent in their attempts to add further gloss to another brilliant year for the trainer, with the victories of Drumbeat (Wootton Bassett) and Queenstown (Galileo) at Saint-Cloud on Sunday taking the stable's Group 1 tally to 25.“Some of them were obviously [drawn] out a little bit, but very rarely is it straightforward. Obviously, we make loads of plans, all the way along, and talk about things a lot. But when the lads come out of the jockey's room, the plan can change totally because they might have a little idea about something else that might happen. Then, when the stalls open, another plan can set in because they mightn't break well and it might all flip around. When it's like that, you have to have a very open mind and play it as it comes, really.“It's always a little bit easier when you're [drawn] middle to inside and it's a little bit more tricky when you're out there. You have to cover a little bit more ground, but we've won from wide draws before. We're visitors and we're lucky to be allowed to visit!”Leading the Ballydoyle visitors out on to the main track at Keeneland on Tuesday was Mile contender Puerto Rico, who ran easily his best race of the campaign when last seen finishing a close-up third behind his reopposing stablemate, True Love, in the G1 Prix de la Foret at ParisLongchamp.Despite having the widest stall to contend with, the revived Puerto Rico could well be underestimated by UK odds of 16-1 in the Mile, certainly after listening to O'Brien on Tuesday.He continued, “Puerto Rico was a dual Group 1 winner last year and it's taken the whole year to get him right. Maybe I was doing the wrong things with him. We felt we had him in a good place going to France the last day and that was a massive run. There's every chance that he could come back to what he was last year – we're nearly there, we think. His work is excellent.”D-Day for Benvenuto CelliniIf the decision of Ryan Moore to partner Puerto Rico instead of True Love in the Mile caused the odd raised eyebrow, then the selection of Benvenuto Cellini (Frankel) over Diamond Necklace in the Turf entered borderline shock territory, with the same call having not paid off when the Irish Derby hero finished ninth in the G1 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe last time, six places behind his four-time Group 1-winning stablemate.Go back and watch the Arc again, O'Brien urged on Tuesday, however, and you'll observe that Benvenuto Cellini didn't enjoy the rub of the green in ParisLongchamp's autumn highlight, having been caught further back than ideal after exiting the stalls sluggishly in what turned into a slowly-run race. Very evidently, there remains a feeling in the camp that we haven't yet seen the best of this flashy son of Frankel, who will break from stall 2 in Saturday's $5-million contest.“If you go back and look at France, you'll see that his run is a lot better than you'd think,” said O'Brien. “For a big, long-striding horse, it [a slowly-run race] was the last thing that he wanted. We're putting a line through that and we think we know why that happened.“We always thought that this race was made for him and we've done a good bit with him in the stalls since France. He was a little bit green actually at Longchamp. When he came out, Ryan said he took a few false steps when he asked him to really go forward. We've worked a good bit on that and we've tried to sharpen him up a good bit.“Ryan was hoping that he'd get a low draw. I was a little bit worried about that, but Ryan was very happy to get a low draw. We think we're going to see a sharper horse, hopefully.”He added of Moore's decision to partner Benvenuto Cellini, “Ryan always does what he thinks is the right thing for the team. Puerto Rico is a colt and Benvenuto Cellini is a colt. Our whole business is built on colts, so we have to do our best for them. He would have ridden her [Diamond Necklace] if he wanted to, but we spoke about it and he decided that he'd go with him. We think he'll leave his last run behind him.”Twenty-one Breeders' Cup winners and countingIn other bits of housekeeping to emerge from Tuesday's debrief, O'Brien revealed that, as things stand, Benvenuto Cellini is likely to stay in training as a four-year-old, along with the aforementioned Diamond Necklace and a notable absentee from the Breeders' Cup squad in dual Group 1 scorer Constitution River (Wootton Bassett).Classic winners Precise and True Love, on the other hand, will likely be having their swansongs on Saturday, before making the short hop to Coolmore's Ashford Stud to visit Justify for their maiden covers. They will be joined in the Triple Crown winner's star-studded book of mares for 2027 by Minnie Hauk, who is still in contention to contest the Japan Cup in the interim.Should Minnie Hauk line up at Tokyo, then O'Brien could well find himself on the cusp of yet more history, with his own record for the most top-level winners in a calendar year [28] now firmly in his sights. Much will depend on what transpires at a picture-perfect Keeneland over the coming days, with O'Brien, as ever, refusing to taking anything for granted.“It's tough every year,” he summed up, three days out from his search for Breeders' Cup winner number 22.“We bring the best horses we have every year, but it's very, very difficult. A lot of things have to go right. They have to travel over and they have to settle in, then they have to have the right draws and get the right breaks in the races. There's a lot of stuff that has to happen, so anytime we do win a Breeders' Cup race it's very special.“But we're always delighted for everybody when they win, no matter what, and I really mean that. It's always nice to win, but you're always a little bit sorry for the people that are second, third and fourth, because it's so difficult and everyone puts in so much.“From before the foals are born, people put in so much to get the mares covered by the right stallions. People then bring them along and the owners buy them at the sales. It's such a long road and a long road for a lot of people doing their best all of the time. So many of them don't get any credit for it, because the thing just moves on, like life. But all of those people, on all of the different steps, they're the people that make it happen.”In the case of Sun Goddess, huge credit must go to her breeder John Tuthill of Owenstown Stud, plus the combined brains trust at Coolmore and Ballydoyle, first for acquiring her relatively inexpensively at £120,000 and then for masterminding a two-year-old campaign of such distinction.From Naas to Keeneland, it's been a long road indeed, but she shows no signs of slowing down yet.The post Euro Banker Sun Goddess “On Springs” as Aidan O’Brien Bids for Outright Breeders’ Cup Record appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.